After six years, Aramghar-Zoo Park flyover is ready to rumble

Rumble strips ready to welcome motorists on the yet-to-be-inaugurated Aramghar-Zoo Park flyover in Hyderabad
| Photo Credit: Serish Nanisetti

The Aramghar-Zoo Park flyover is ready for inauguration as most of the works related to the main six-lane road have been completed. The long-delayed flyover is expected to ease the flow of traffic on the Bangalore Highway between Purana Pul and Aramghar Junction.

On Saturday afternoon, workers gave finishing touches to the road by painting batches of rumble-strips on either side of the 4.1 km highway. “The flyover is ready for inauguration. All the project work has been completed. We are waiting for a time slot where both the Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy and Hyderabad Member of Parliament Asaduddin Owaisi can attend the inauguration function. The delay is now just a matter of convenience,” said a supervisor at the worksite.

While the work on the main flyover is complete, the planned ramps to make the flyover accessbile to more people on either side of the flyover including Shastripura, Babagadda, Mahmood Nagar and other areas are not yet complete. “The land acquisition on Babagadda side has been completed only recently it will take time. With the ramps on either side and the road below to becoming normal will take six more months,” another GHMC official about the ₹799.74 crore flyover. The spot where ramps would merge with the main flyover is covered with a green tarp while properties are being bulldozed on the other side to make way for the proposed ramps.

Currently, the road under the flover is a nightmare for commuters with scattered building debris, unfinished road, overflowing sewage and traffic diversions. “The road will ease traffic flow only for a few people who will be using it. As a RTC bus driver it will not affect us in any way. They have to finish the pillars for the ramp and the road and even then then the bottlneck near Purana Pul will remain. One body to the crematorium there and the traffic gets backed up for six kilometres on either side,” said Ram Reddy, who works for the RTC.

The project has been delayed for quite some time. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Standing Committee had approved the flyover in February 2018. Most of the delay was due to property acquisition and the reluctance of squatters to relinquish the worksites in front of their workshops.